Staff at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp’s India and the Philippines centre, up to associate level, will get extra salary in April, chief executive Brian Humphries said in a note to employees.

The US-headquartered company said that the extra money of 25 per cent of base pay, is in recognition of the hardship the employees and their families as well because they work from home in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will apply to more than two-thirds of the India workforce. ‘This will be processed with your April paycheck, and we will be reviewing this approach monthly,’ Humphries said.

Cognizant has over 2 lakh employees in India, next only to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which has a global headcount of more than 4 lakh, the majority of which are based in India.

‘We all recognize that Covid-19 is one of the biggest shocks to the world in decades. Cognizant, like all global companies, is experiencing the effects of this public health emergency on both the demand and fulfilment sides of our business, from London to Mumbai to Manilla and New York,’ Humphries said.

Cognizant has enabled work from home for the majority of its offshore teams. Work-from-home measures include provisioning new laptops and encrypting desktops and moving them to associate homes, enabling the use of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), providing additional bandwidth connectivity and air cards with appropriate client permissions and security protocols.